Proper 27 C + The truth + 11.9.25

 

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22; 2 Thess. 2:1-5, 13-17; St Luke 20:27-38)

 

“Now [God] is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to [God] all of them are alive."

I say this with the utmost respect for my friends who are believers, but I will admit that, as a believer, it is my agnostic friends who push me into a better understanding of my faith. When I was in high school, a few of my close friends often asked me pointed questions about what I believed and why I held those beliefs. They could not quite get into traditional religion, but oddly enough, they encouraged mine. Because I had to develop reasons behind my beliefs, I could not simply have blind faith and be taken seriously by my friends.

So, I have some sympathy for the particular group of Sadducees who approach Jesus in the passage we hear from Luke today. They are not sure about the resurrection. They are not convinced that bodies can come back to life. And so, they go around asking all sorts of questions about the afterlife-perhaps more than those who unquestioningly accepted that of course people were resurrected. But the tricky thing is, they are either so tangled up in theories themselves, trying to disprove the resurrection, or so convinced that they can trick Jesus into letting everyone know it is just an elaborate ploy, that they ask Jesus the wrong question.

Perhaps they were seeking to establish details about the afterlife. But what Jesus hears is them using the rules of the here and now to discuss something about which they have not a clue. To understand this passage, we must first go over the Levitical law. It was actually developed, thank God, to protect women who might be vulnerable if they were left widowed without children to support them. If a brother married his brother’s widow, then she would be taken care of. However, this question also relates to property. The Sadducees are not asking whether the woman could be married in heaven to the brother with whom she was most in love. They are asking whose property she would be in heaven. And Jesus won’t play along.
Because Jesus says, heaven isn’t like that. We will be like angels there. I take that as: we will be free, totally our own people. Things like marriage, which were primarily financial and social institutions at that time, can be vital in life, especially in ancient times, for survival. However, they will no longer exist in the same way because we will be freed from the constraints of earthly life.

These rules, says Jesus, are for the living. Because we are the ones who need the help. We are the ones who need the guidance. Those in heaven have been received into God’s presence, purified, and made whole. Different things matter in heaven.

Because God is a God of the living, because to God all are alive.

This brings up again, how do we live now? As Christians, trying to follow God’s guidance in the here and now?

A while back, our Wednesday chapel group read the book "In the Footsteps of Jesus," and in it, author Wayne Stacey recounts a story about a woman who encounters an angel. He helps heal her pains and helps her be present to others in a new way. He shares a strange message with her:

“He whispers to her: ‘We’re just another army. We all look alike-we didn’t before. It’s not what you expect. We miss the other. Don’t count so much on the next. Notice things here. We’re just another army.’’[1]

Don’t count so much on the next. Notice things here. These words stuck in my brain. What could the angel have meant in this re-creation? Don’t we indeed count on the next as Christians? Surely that is what those in Thessaloniki were doing. Trying to count on Jesus’ second coming. But he hadn’t come yet. And so, what to do in the here and now? While we are waiting?
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I read the newspaper, I lose heart a bit about how we can live our faith in our daily lives. Our Bible tells us to be good stewards of God’s creation, but our country doesn’t participate in the Climate Change Pact. Our baptismal vows as well as our scriptures admonish us to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and yet daily we see immigrants, the poor, people of color, women, LGBTQ folk, the sick, and the disabled treated with contempt or indifference. How do we live now? The ten commandments tell us to honor God and our neighbor, not to murder, not to lie, and not to covet the property of another, which can be interpreted as taking away the property of another without cause, and yet what do we see in the news with frequency? How frequently do people truly honor the Sabbath and take a whole day to rest with family? (Within what is possible?)

How to live now? These questions feel all the more urgent in these current times, when we have just elected a new bishop, and part of what informed our decisions was our opinion on which values we want to live into as a diocese over the next decade or so. Similar decisions around values were reflected in this week’s election results. We see glimmers of justice, and there is still much work to be done so that we can work together more effectively across the divides of hostility.

What we do is we dig back into what we have learnt. We remember that God is here, with us, just as we hear in Haggai, just as the writer reminds the readers in the second letter to the Thessalonians, just as Jesus showed in his every word and breath. We remember what God has taught us about standing firm and holding fast to the traditions that were taught to us. We are not in the same place as the Thessalonians were 2000 years ago, but we have our modern fears and doubts. How can we use those same questions to reaffirm our faith in what is good, decent, and holy?

As our collect says, God is already working against all that is evil in our world. This is our equivalent to the mantra that “the universe is aligning in your favor.” God is at our side and will not fail in completing God’s perfect will. Our work is to do the work of the living alongside the God of the living. To hold fast to the hope that we have in Jesus and to keep trying to act justly and with mercy in a world that may scoff, but will soon learn the truth.

Amen.

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[1] R. Wayne Stacey, In the Footsteps of Jesus (Kindle, Chapter 9).